Presentation 53

Presentation 53

Introduction

When the telephone messages of those trapped by flames in the twin towers in New York in 7/11 were released to the public, we discovered that callers spoke of their love for their families. Parents were asked to care for children who’d never see mum or dad again. Children were asked to care for widowed parents… The recordings were harrowing. None of them contained trivia. No one said, ‘The bedroom needs a lick of paint, or, I didn’t remember to pick up the dry cleaning’ . When you know death is immanent you want to speak of things that are of supreme importance. So when Judas left to organise Jesus’ arrest, Jesus began to communicate truths of absolutely vital importance to his disciples.

He first speaks of glory.

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Glory

The word ‘glory’ has an interesting history. Jews were familiar with the ‘Shekinnah glory’, a visible expression of God’s presence that descended on the tabernacle in the wilderness and again on Solomon’s temple. By Jesus’ day the word had come to mean, “to have a good opinion about” and thus carried the idea of “praise or honour”. And so, as the true worth and character of God is grasped, then he is in turn honoured. You may remember how John introduced his gospel: “we have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” 1v14 .

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Glory

Jesus made the Father known but what was the climax of his revelation of God’s glory? Some say, Jesus’ transfiguration on the mount, when his divinity burst out of his humanity. Wonderful as that incident was, it is not the fullest display of God’s glory! Indeed, John is the only Gospel writer not to mention the transfiguration. Why? Because he intends us to see the cross as the fullest revelation of God’s glory. The cross reveals God’s holiness, mercy, justice, grace and love. And it is this scene that Jesus has in mind when he speaks of his glory and that of the Father. We cannot rightly worship God, or honour his name, without an adequate understanding of what happened on the cross.

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Glory

And so, when Jesus says ‘where I am going you cannot come’ v33, he is, in the first instance, alluding to the cross. His disciples would one day die and join him in heaven and while some would die a martyr’s death even that death would be quite different from Jesus’ death. In v33 Jesus is speaking of the unique transaction that would take place on the cross. A work that he would need to do alone and from which his disciples were disqualified. Jesus’ death was a substitutionary death. When a substitute takes the field, the person he’s replacing cannot follow, ‘where I am going you cannot come’. Jesus came to die on his people’s behalf, to bear the punishment they deserved to bear. Presentation 53

Glory

The cross forms the watershed of human history! There the consequences of Adam’s disobedience were reversed. Jesus endured our hell that we might enjoy his heaven. The cross was the focus of Jesus’ mission and it is on the cross that Jesus is glorified. In Jewish thought, to hang on a cross was considered to be accursed by God. Muslims share a similar view towards crucifixion. They view Jesus as a great prophet, whom God would not allow to die a shameful death. But this is to miss the point.

Jesus says, ‘the cross is the scene of my glory’. It reveals the lengths to which God’s love has gone to secure the forgiveness of fallen man, and it is the measure of both God’s justice and mercy. Presentation 53

Love

And it is with this overwhelming expression of God’s love in mind that Jesus’ sequence of thought moves on seamlessly in v34 to the behaviour of his disciples. call it a ‘A new command I give you: Love one another, as I have loved you’. Now the command ‘to love’ is found in the O.T. Why then ‘new’ command? Because now the command to love has been raised to a new level by Jesus! Today, when people talk of loving others they often mean, exercising warm feelings towards them, or, ‘not doing anyone a bad turn’ or, more positively, ‘giving a helping hand when we can’. Presentation 53

Love

But Jesus makes it clear that he is providing his followers with a new datum for love, a new measuring stick, namely his self-sacrifice on the cross. Grasping this throws fresh light and understanding on his words, “Love one another as [on the scale of] I have loved you”. Kitchen scales are capable of weighing a handful of fruit but we need a quite different set of scales to weigh an industrial container. What scales are we to use to measure our love for our brothers and sisters in Christ? The sacrificial love of Jesus, which found its climax upon the cross, makes it clear that this is the new measuring scale for love, nothing else will do.

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Love

Loving others sacrificially can express itself in a variety of ways. We can die to self as we use of our resources, our gifts and our time in God’s service. So that instead of saying, “It’s not convenient, it wouldn’t fit into my timetable, it would mean I could afford only one foreign holiday this year instead of two”, we demonstrate the sacrificial love of Jesus. This love is not to be viewed as an optional extra in the package of discipleship. When you buy a new car you are offered a number of optional extras, sun-roofs, alloy wheels, GPS navigation, things that are nice but not necessary. And in order to reinforce the fact that sacrificial love is not an optional extra Jesus says, in v34 “so you must love one another”.

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Love

Perhaps the fullest treatment and definition of Jesus’ love is found in 1 Cor. 13… “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails”.

Now before we all spiral into despair, and conclude that this sacrificial-second-mile love is beyond our attainment, we must recognise that Jesus gives us the power to love like this. Presentation 53

Love

Indeed love is part of the furniture that Jesus brings with him when he makes our hearts his home. Our fallen human natures can’t manufacture Jesus’ love. Instead, our good, charitable deeds are often done for no other reason than to raise our community profile. Remember how scathing Jesus was about the Pharisees, who did their good works before men ‘to be seen by them’ Matt.6v1. They wanted recognition, Respect and approval. Yes! They wanted glory! But when Jesus makes his home in our hearts he brings a new nature and with it a new production line. What the N.T. calls the fruit of the Spirit and on the top of the production list is ‘love’. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance…” Gal.6v22-23 Presentation 53

Love

Significantly, it is love that Jesus chooses to fasten onto here. ‘By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another’ . Jesus intends ‘love’ to be the name-tag or, the identifying symbol that marks out the Christian as being different from other people! It’s fairly easy to wear a cross or have a bumper sticker on the rear of your car, but the mark Jesus is looking for is sacrificial love. Do others see that in our lives? Presentation 53

Glory

Tertullian, a C3 rd Christian writer, describes the name-tag given to Christians in his day by the unbelieving world.

“each puts in a small donation... These gifts are . . . not spent on feasts, and drinking-bouts, and eating-houses, but to support and bury poor people, to supply the wants of boys and girls destitute of means and parents, and of old persons confined now to the house; such, too, as have suffered shipwreck; and if there happen to be any in the mines or banished to the islands or shut up in the prisons, for nothing but their fidelity to the cause of God's Church, they become the nurslings of their confession. But it is mainly the deeds of a

love so noble that lead many to put a brand upon us. See, they say, how they love one another, …see, they say about us, how they are ready even to die for one another”.

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Love

How does Peter respond to this important teaching on love! Does he ask how to be more like Jesus? No! He has failed to keep up with Jesus and is still attempting to come to terms with Jesus’ earlier remark that the disciples could not follow him [ v36 ]. Peter asks, “Lord where are you going?” Clearly, the subsequent teaching on love had failed to register! And so Jesus patiently rewinds, making it clear that after his unique sacrifice upon the cross, where sin, death and hell would be defeated, Peter could indeed follow him all the way to heaven. And the reason he could do so was because Jesus’ death would remove all of the impediments that previously barred his entrance. In addition Jesus’ death would secure empowerment for a radical new way of life to be bestowed upon Jesus’ followers!

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Love

Poor Peter is as full of himself as ever! A new nature, Christ indwelling, a new Christ-like love operating in his heart - who needs it! Not him, he’s ready to serve Jesus right now! His love and commitment are second to none! He would put his life on the line for Jesus without any further meddling in his heart! Peter’s response echoes that of many. We can be so confident of our abilities and attribute to our sinful nature a strength that it does not possess. And while we might not want to say so in so many words we imply, “Lord my love can’t be improved upon. I don’t need you to come into my life and make any changes. I am pretty comfortable with me”.

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Love

Peter’s words, ‘I love you, I will lay down my life for you’, are cheap but their limitations are easily exposed as Peter would learn to his embarrassment. Many today are also embarrassed when their self-assessment of their love for Jesus and their confidence in their fallen human nature is put to the test. Peter was saying, “Of all of the disciples, I reckon that I will be honoured for my love and commitment to Jesus”. But that self-congratulatory thinking would be wonderfully transformed in years to come. Peter would describe how the new spiritual birth, which changes a man’s life, is clearly the product of God’s grace and so, as a result, ‘praise, glory and honour’ belong to Jesus. 1Pet.1.3 Presentation 53

Conclusion

Do we glory in what our Lord Jesus has accomplished for us on the cross? Do we possess the new nature which he died to procure? Is there a clearly visible name tag on our lives that causes people in our family, our community and our places of work say, “There goes a follower of Jesus” ?

Do visitors to our church fellowship say, “See how they love one another” ? If not, then we had better weep as Peter wept, when the bubble of his arrogant, confident discipleship burst and the shallowness of his love was publicly exposed.

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